Brexit Examined.

But what does it mean for my climbing?  

I wake up on Friday morning, having also gone late to bed on Friday night and had an hour on the internet at about four, to the news that old people/racists/nationalist idealists have apparently turned out in slightly larger numbers to vote down those of us who sensibly preferred things the way they were.

Immediately I start to worry: what does this mean for my climbing?

Now, the outcome of the vote wasn't entirely unexpected.  I had hoped that stereotypes about human decision making would triumph: if people on mass are really motivated by Fear versus Greed, then staying in Europe is no contest.  It turns out a load of media/print journalist cunts telling everyone that they can have MORE if they only get rid of them MIGRANTS managed to play on fear and greed a lot better than David Cameron, who only really understands greed.

I knew we might be in trouble when the results from Sunderland came in.   I went to university in Sunderland to study Environmental Management.  Sunderland and County Durham were so badly fucked by the decline of the shipyards and the closure of the coal mines, that the EU poured funding into the area - new bus station, the lot.  My course fees were free, and they gave me the same money as the dole to go.  Sunderland voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, apparently preferring poverty.


Of course.  Here's why:
1.  Pretty sociable bunch climbers, especially as the mode of climbing in the UK is to visit an indoor wall regularly, often to the exclusion of climbing outside.  So we all have a chat, and any commercial wall usually has a cafe: tres European no?
2.  Because we're talking to each other, we're not so socially isolated- therefore less likely to have odd ideas about how black people are a conspiracy.
3.  We are talking to people from a variety of backgrounds.  This will include some Spanish dentists and vets, German and French research scientists, who speak excellent English and invite us into their parents' homes so we can climb in the Pyrenees.  
Hospitality and friendship now banned by Leave Campaign.
4.  We also mix with people who went to public school.  Except not the ambitious types who want to play real life Game of Thrones as the Warlord of Thanet South, or head of the relentless Horde of Middle England.  Normal ones, who have a slightly different accent, but nonetheless love to climb - much like the French. 

Add in the fact - and this is true - that FaceAche only really shows you posts about subjects or from people that you are going to agree with... disaster looms like a precipice in a white-out.  This is one reason everyone was so fucked off, why the news feed exploded with angry and sad posts.  I enjoyed enjoyed how fucking funny my climbing friends are when they are annoyed.  Personal favourite: Tom Wilkinson - 

Well seeing as Farage has essentially got UK 'independence' his whole reason for being is now gone. I'm expecting him to give an evil cackle and dissipate into a cloud of bats never to be seen again. 

We live in hope.

So the markets tumble, Farage retracts spending assurances about the NHS, and Cornwall County Council demand that they still continue to receive EU money, despite decisively voting out.

Oh well, I think, at least I can still go climbing.  My relationship between gravity and the rock I am on should be unchanged by mere social and economic considerations.  In reality, those incredible moments - at the limit of your technical and physical ability- when it is just you, the handholds and the fall, probably account for less than an hour of my whole year.  What an hour though!

In contrast, I spent ten minutes walling to the Polling Station and putting an x in a box.  Underwhelming. 
I spent ten minutes on Friday morning signing a load of online petitions: from Greenpeace and Amnesty and Survival International.  It will be two years before we can formally leave and I reckon clicking online petitions is not going to crush the established order.  In that time, there has to be some way that I can help make sure all the good bits about the EU - the human rights legislation and the environmental legislation can survive.  

Otherwise, climbing and hillwalking in the UK is going to be a battle of access, taking place in a degrading environment, while landowners shout at us for not making any money.  

But WHAT should we do? Whinge? Vote?

I have literally no idea what a climber CAN do.











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